Hands-on | Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown

You know, part of me wishes that Sega knew Fuudo would win the Super Street Fighter IV: AE tournament at the Evolution 2011 tournament. That Fuudo’s incredible fundamentals and impressive reaction time was due in part of him having forged part of his innumerable skill on the Virtual Fighter series before unleashing the latest iteration to a larger world wide audience. I like to entertain this silly notion because I can’t for the life of me figure out what took them so long.

Virtual Fighter 5: Final Showdown is due to hit PSN and XBL in Summer 2012. It will be over 4 years since the previous version of Virtual Fighter 5 was on a home console. A timeframe that previously measured a console’s lifespan in days of yore. With it comes a slew of balance changes, the return of Sumo wrestler Taka-Arashi and a new character Jean Kujo who is a Karate practitioner (both were released in the VF: 5 R though this version never saw console release).

At PAX I got a chance to sit down and play on the only 2 arcade cabinets of Final Showdown available in the U.S. There is something I can’t quite put my finger on but it might be due to all the iterative changes made to the game. The characters and pacing felt that much more polished and refined. So much so that for the game that I can’t think of anything I would want to add or remove. For a lack of a better phrase, it just feels right. Virtua Fighter is a series that is exceptionally deep with it’s deceptively three button system and it retains that in spades. Watching experience players they moved and reacted with an elegance that needs to be seen to be believed and with thought as they tried to pick up their opponent’s tendencies. Newcomers shouldn’t be daunted however as there were a lot of new players that could easily pick up the game and from the smiles, you could tell they were absolutely loving it.

That’s not to say all is right with world for Final Showdown. Quite the opposite in fact. The competition will be incredibly stiff – Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 will have been out for a few months, Street Fighter X Tekken and Soul Caliber 5 are due out in March right before it, and Arc Sys’ Persona based fighting game is targeting a Spring release as well. The lack of a spectator mode is a big concern as well. It’s grown to be considered a standard feature by today’s fighters and not having including it in the face of so many other competitive fighting games seems… well… silly. Especially for a title that is intended to be a downloadable game.

It will survive however. Sega-AM2 has crafted one of the most in-depth and balanced fighters available today. And it’s legion of fans and critics knows this. It’s future growth and survivability will depend heavily on how Sega and the VF community approach it’s release.  It isn’t as flashy as it’s contemporaries but on the merits of the game alone, I think you’ll be hard pressed to find a better example of a fighting game today.